The present invention relates to a textile machine apparatus for handling tubes having remaining yarn thereon.
In known textile machine arrangements in which a spinning machine is operatively connected with a winding machine, tubes having yarn built thereon to form a yarn package are supplied from the spinning machine to the winding machine for unwinding of the yarn packages by the winding machine and empty tubes having no yarn thereon are supplied from the winding machine to the spinning machine for subsequent yarn package building operations. It is also known to provide a transport system for transporting the tubes around the spinning and winding machines which includes a plurality of peg tray-type tube support members for individually supporting the tubes in upright dispositions.
Those tubes which are circulated from the winding machine to the spinning machine must be free of yarn before they are resupplied to the individual spinning stations of the spinning machine. In normal operation, a relatively high number of the tubes exiting the winding stations are ideally already free of any remaining yarn due to the successful complete unwinding of the yarn package previously supported on the tube. However, the operational reality of the yarn winding operation is that a certain percentage of the tubes exiting the winding station will still have remaining yarn thereon. Of those tubes having remaining yarn thereon, it is helpful to distinguish between tubes having more than a predetermined minimum amount of yarn which would make it worthwhile to recirculate the tube to a winding station for further unwinding of the remaining yarn and those tubes which have less than the predetermined minimum amount which are more advantageously handled by stripping the remaining yarn therefrom to place them in condition as empty tubes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,544,107 discloses an arrangement in which tubes having yarn remaining thereon after passing through the winding stations are collected for manual handling of the tubes to strip the remaining yarn therefrom or to prepare the end of the yarn for re-processing through a winding station. However, the collection of the tubes detrimentally reduces the number of tubes which are available for circulation between the winding machine and the associated spinning machine and creates the risk that the production capacity of the spinning and winding machines must be curtailed due to an insufficient number of tubes available for the spinning and winding operations. Accordingly, the need exists for an assembly for handling tubes having remaining yarn thereon in a manner which does not significantly reduce the number of tubes available for the building of yarn packages thereon.